On 6/4/08, Wang Mengqiang <WangMengqiang at canon-ib.com.cn> wrote: > Hello, everyone, > > My name is Wang mengqiang, I am expecting to get your help on development > very much. > > I am investigating to develop a commerce driver on linux. I have studied > the sane project for some time. And, we are planning to develop the driver on > sane. But, I have some doubts on license of sane so, I'd like to get the > answer from sane directly.
we are not lawyers, but we will try to help. > 1) In the development, we plan to use several special modules which do not > contain any open source code from sane or other party, because they contain > some tecnology that we do not want to open. So, that is, our backend is > composed of two parts, one part is open source code which we refer to the > source code from sane, and another part is one that should not be open. Of > course, the first part(open source part) will call the functions in the > second part(closed source part). After compiling and linking them together, > we get the backend. My questions is whether we can keep the second part > closed in this way, whether this way comform to the license of sane(GPL)? > Please refer to the attached image for the architecture. SANE is GPL, with an added exception to allow proprietary front-end programs to link against it. What you are suggesting is the opposite- you wish to have a free 'middleware' layer, which loads closed backends to do that actual work? I think this is in violation of the spirit of the license exception, though perhaps not the letter. Please read the file LICENSE in the sane-backends source, it attempts to clarify the situation, by specifically referring to the 'licensing status of the _program_ that uses the libraries', not the status of a library. Note also that your plan prevents those of us that use alternative CPU's (PPC, ARM) from using your code, unless you are going to compile it for us. allan -- "The truth is an offense, but not a sin"
